


like a diamond from black dust

by azetidine



Category: Legend of Eli Monpress - Rachel Aaron
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:39:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azetidine/pseuds/azetidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josef gives Nico a bouquet for their first anniversary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a diamond from black dust

**Author's Note:**

> This is for [Audrey](http://audlovesgil.tumblr.com). I can't draw, but I can write, so it's a ficlet instead of fanart. Cowritten.

Josef wasn't a moron.

He knew what women wanted. He'd seen it, often enough, in a thousand different venues: sweet-talking and flowers, charms and laughter, an allure that seemed to live somewhere between bashfulness and lechery. He'd seen it, often enough. Sometimes he'd even offered up a taste of his own charm, in charming a barmaid or two before they left whatever town it was for the next one.

He knew, too, that women had certain _expectations_ \-- expectations which revolved around silly things like _anniversaries_ , which were nothing more than marking the passage of time.

Josef wasn't a moron. He knew what women wanted. He knew what they expected, when anniversaries came around. Flowers. Sweet words. Charming behavior.

He wasn't much for words, and less for being charming, and flowers just died when they got picked, anyway -- he never _had_ understood why women wanted those, even if he knew they _did_.

He knew what women wanted.

He had _no idea at all_ , however, what _Nico_ would want for their anniversary. He'd been King of Osera for well over a year; they'd been together, not just between the two of them but in the sight of all Oserans, for one day less than a year. Their anniversary was tomorrow. He had to get her _something_.

But not flowers. That was stupid.

A _bouquet_ , though... That had potential, he thought, and got to work.

*****

Nico sat by the shore, watching the water hit the rocks with a sort of fascination that would never fade. Since she had learned to see spirits -- and how long ago had that been now? it was hard to remember, exactly, the same way she never did manage to remember her age, and it didn't really count as _learning_ so much as it did _comprehending_ , all of a sudden -- everything had been different, and not just because she was accepting of her identity as a monster. It was different because there was so much _more_ to the world.

The date was significant, today, she knew that. It was when things had changed, between them. When he had said _I love you_ and she said, _I love you too_ and then finally, after what felt like forever, forced herself to spit out what she had realized when she'd learned he'd been wed: _I'm in love with you_. Things changed, and at the same time, they didn't, because nothing was really different between them.

It was just identifying feelings they hadn't known they'd had.

(Well. Nico had known. Josef hadn't realized, until she said that; and then he thought about it; and then he kissed her, and _that_ was a change for Nico, too.) 

She watched the water hit the rocks, and didn't say hello, because they were busy and because she didn't want to risk frightening them, despite the coat wrapped fully around her, but she did smile.

That was where she was, when Josef found her, his bouquet held awkwardly hidden behind his back.

"Nico."

It wasn't a question -- he didn't call it -- it was really just identification, so that she knew he knew he'd found her, because to Josef it was obvious that she already knew _he_ was there.

"Yes," she agreed, and tore herself away from watching the water to glance over her shoulder at him, hint of a smile broadening into a genuine smile. A real, true sort of expression that gave away actual emotion. Josef sometimes even got to witness Nico's sense of humor without restriction, these days.

Even if it was still hard for her, sometimes, at that shore. She was proud of it, though. It had come so far from where it had been shortly after they arrived.

"Happy anniversary," Josef grumbled with care, and twisted his arm with _more_ care, that his bouquet wouldn't draw blood as he pulled it forward to present to her.

(Figuring out a way of wrapping a dozen knives of different lengths that would neither fully obscure them nor be sliced to ribbons _by_ them had taken up fully ninety percent of the time he'd spent working on his bouquet, of course.)

Nico -- stood up, first, to fully take in how awkward the entire thing was; Josef looked completely uncomfortable, even though he was just as clearly trying to present as collected. He'd always been so good with women, even if it had just been brief sexual encounters being the only thing Nico had ever really witnessed. That and Adela, anyway. But this was different.

 _She_ was different, was the thing, even if she never really quite realized how different she was to him from anyone else. She was still getting used to it, and he was still trying to show her how love was meant to work.

Apparently this was part of it.

Her smile slowly broadened, as she took in what he was trying to do. "A bouquet," she hazarded, extending her hands as she stepped closer to him to take it -- them -- from him. "No flowers?" Nico didn't look at all disappointed. She was smiling broader, even showing teeth (and not paying any heed at all to how many rows of teeth she showed). 

He'd selected his dozen daggers and knives with care, of course, because he _did_ care -- they were a gift for _Nico_ , who mattered more to him than anyone else in the world, now.

She'd seen his blades often enough, in the years they'd traveled together, and the year they'd stayed more-or-less-put together, too. She knew them each, by how he used them if not their official names. And now --

Now she had one of each, or near enough, of her own. They were his; they were hers, now, and he'd pick up replacements along the way, when he needed them. A skinning knife, a filleting knife, a knife with a blade so small he'd used it to clean under his fingernails more than anything else, even an omnipresent Oseran short sword; two elegantly-lethal stilettos that could, but weren't, tucked into each other to appear (relatively) innocuous, and then six perfectly-balanced throwing knives to make up the other half-dozen.

(Technically, the stilettos had never been his. Technically, they'd always reminded him a little bit of her claws, anyway.)

"Flowers die," Josef pointed out, wary. What if she wanted the damn flowers anyway?

"Everything dies," Nico told him in a voice resonating practicality that she surely picked up from Tesset, but it had become her own just as much as anything else about her in the recent passed. Nico said _Everything dies_ like some people said _It's raining_ ; it was just an observation. What was different was her adding, "Knives don't for a very long time, though."

She didn't want the damn flowers.

She was grinning, and if a few extra teeth showed up, maybe Nico was slipping because of how much she was _feeling_.

"Hello, you," she told the knives, and if a few of them thrummed under her touch, that just made her smile more. "It's perfect," was what got said to Josef, instead, looking up at him like he was the only thing in the world. And to her, he mostly was. He was the center of her world, anyway, and had been as long as she could remember. "They're perfect. They don't need a vase, they can go in my pockets and they're _useful_ and --"

It dawned on her. "Yours," she said, voice shaking a little, smile faltering. "These are _your_ knives --"

Like Den had been his fight?

"No," Josef whispered, reaching out to cover her hands with his, wrapped around a dozen hilts at once. "They're yours, now. I want you to have them."

She already had his heart; he might not be able to give her his Heart, but its lesser kindred surely made a decent gesture. Didn't they?

Her hands were about a billion times smaller than his, or that's how it felt.

The blades between them made it less of a difference.

The blades in Nico's hands in Josef's hands just felt _right_. 

"Okay," she whispered, looking down at them, and then looking back up at him; to everyone's surprise, there were tears in her eyes. 

It still felt weird to say I love you, it still felt weird to think about loving someone like that, and so she very rarely said it, and this was one of those times where she didn't, but it was there, in her eyes.

"Happy anniversary," Josef whispered again, leaning down to kiss her gently.

\-- Of course, that _had_ to be the moment when Eli came up the hill, shouting for them and carrying on as if Miranda's huge mutt had him by the seat of the pants, _thoroughly_ interrupting their moment -- but they'd always have it to share, between the two of them.


End file.
